Every Step Is Just a Different Way of Letting Go – Sandy B.

Hi, everybody. My name's Sandy B.. I'm an alcoholic. How y'all doing? I'm going to put this up a little. Yeah, I came here 42 years ago. I was in the Marine Corps, and another Marine came to my house and picked me up and took me to my first meeting at the Manassas, Virginia group of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the meeting lasted about five hours. It was a group anniversary, and they had a million people celebrating. They had turkey and ham and square dancing, country fiddles. And when I got to the meeting, I'd been sober about five hours, and I had ten hours when the meeting ended, and I was not agreeing with anyone when they came up and said, Isn't sobriety wonderful? I was going, I don't think so. And I wanted to leave that meeting. I wanted to just get away, but it was in an old odd fellow's house out in Manassas, real country, and there wasn't even a street light or where you could go, and it was sleeting, and I just stood out there and felt really terrible. And I felt this hand on my shoulder, and I turned around, and it was this Al-Anon lady who I since got to know, her and her husband, and her name was Betsy Lynch, and she said, It's going to be all right. And I believed her, and I turned around and went back in and sat down. That was the end of my struggle. I just believed her. And about a month ago, the Manassas group of Virginia was celebrating its 55th year, and they asked me to come and talk at the group anniversary. And I went there, and like Bob, my sponsor was there. And he said, He's got lung cancer and has been really struggling for the last year or so. And I didn't think he'd make it up from a little bit further south in Virginia, but his home group brought him up, had him in a wheelchair. And so there we were. You know, it was like the bookends of this wonderful period of time in the same group where he brought me. And so it was very moving. I got a picture in my wallet of the two of us that night, and it was just remarkable. And about a week later, his home group members, who I stay in touch with, called me up, and they said, Well, it looks like it's getting real close. It's renal, kidney shutdown, failure. His family's assembling, and we're hoping that he lasts until his son gets back from Germany, where his son is a... in the German symphony orchestra playing French horn. And his son has told him, I'm coming home, and I'm going to play an entire symphony for you. So we all said, Well, we know he's going to last until that son gets home. There's no way he's not going to last to that. So his son came and went. And I called him yesterday. I mean, this is like two more weeks later. And I said, Bill, how are you doing? I'm going out to Vegas. I wanted to, you know, tell you that I'm so happy you're my sponsor and all that. And I said, How are you feeling? Oh, doing great. I'm walking again. So we left it that we would shoot for 50 years together, and we'll just see. He's a tough old guy, and it's been... I just wanted to share that with you, how important sponsors are. And it's not that often that you can get to both. You don't have to stay alive that long. And so it's been a wonderful journey. And he taught me a lot about AA, taught me a lot about service. And so as I stand up here tonight, you know, I like to talk about whatever pops into my head. And I was thinking when you were reading the traditions, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous, it's universally respected and loved. It is... There's no one. There's no group that hates AA. There's no segment of society or segment of the world that doesn't love AA. News reporters run around to dig up dirt on everybody. I mean, it's gotten bad. You know how easy it would be to sit out in front of an AA meeting, pick off the celebrities with a camera, and be like shooting, ducking a pond out back. Never happens. Doesn't happen. Why? Ah, just not going to touch AA. Something special about AA. And if they did, their editor wouldn't let them use it. Now, isn't that remarkable? There's no law against it. We just happen to have a tradition. And it's being respected. And I was thinking, you know, why would it be so respected? And you know what I came to the conclusion? Because we don't take an opinion on anything. That little, sneaky, tenth tradition. AA has no opinion on any outside issues. Sounds pretty innocuous. Oh, so, they don't have it. And I always tell the story about when I was in Washington and the Senate Health and Human Services Committee was trying to decide, whether to put warning labels on alcohol like they did on cigarettes. And they said, we got to get expert witnesses as to whether it would be a good idea or not. And somebody on the staff said, well, who could be a bigger expert than Alcoholics Anonymous? So, let's call them up. So, they called the General Service Office and said, we're having this. Could you send somebody? Oh, be glad to. So, they sent somebody down, they interviewed the staff person, they explained the whole bill, and they said, now, what? Where do you think AA would stand on this? Oh, we don't have any opinion on that at all. And the senators and the committee staff couldn't believe that someone had no opinion. It was beyond them. They have an opinion on everything, you know what I'm saying? No opinion whatsoever. Now, I have an opinion. Personally, you can have opinions, and I think there should be a warning label. And I can tell you, I don't know exactly what it should say, so it would do some good. It should say, warning, this bottle may run out. You should consider buying two. And think of all the lives that might be saved when the alcoholic's at home, and it's about quarter to 12 at midnight, and he ran out, and he's got 15 minutes to get back down to the bar, and he wouldn't have to get in his car. So, it would probably do some good. But anyway, getting back to this, no opinion. Let's say that just for example, AA took a very narrow opinion on wool blankets. So, we shouldn't have any wool blankets. The people who liked wool blankets would no longer have the same opinion of AA. And then if they took an opinion on the Girl Scouts, they would have the same opinion of AA. And then if they took an opinion on the Girl Scouts, or the Boy Scouts, or the left wing, or the right wing, anything that you take an opinion on, the opposing opinion no longer holds you in that exalted position. It just segments, segments, segments. As soon as that, it's the most amazing thing in the world how powerful that tradition is on making AA universal. There just is no more. There's no little narrow segment that can't stand AA. And that's because we have kept that and our primary purpose, which is, that's what you call this group, right? Or no, the specific group. You talk about the primary purpose. And it's so easy to say, well, gee, there are certain things in the world that we ought to get behind, that we ought to have an opinion on. I mean, it just seems to come up from inside. And this miracle that these traditions got stuck in there, that we don't do that, has left us in that position. And the same thing with primary purpose, how tempting it is to take a powerful solution like this and try to apply it into a much wider range. And somehow, they had the wisdom to say, yes, these 12 steps are indeed miraculous. And you, with other problems, are welcome to them. Help yourself. We'll help you understand them as you use them against gambling or as you use them against sex addiction or whatever the problem is. I think there's 140 groups using the 12 steps, but not one group helping others. I think there's 140 groups using the 12 steps, but not one group helping others. I think there's 140 groups using the 12 steps, but not one group helping others. I think there's 140 groups using the 12 steps, but not one group helping others. I think there's 140 groups using the 12 steps, but not one group helping others. I think there's 140 groups using the 12 steps, but not one group helping others. Because that 140 problems, when you have one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic, you have the equivalent of a magnifying glass taking the sun and focusing it until there's a fire. And if you tried to do the same thing and spread that so that the magnifying glass could put some heat on a wider area, you wouldn't get it on fire. You'd just have it warm. It would be diluted. The power of this message wouldn't work. And then we'd wonder, what happened? What happened? We thought we could, these things should apply to every type of problem. They do, but only with a primary purpose behind it. So when one alcoholic is talking to another alcoholic, one drug addict is talking to another drug addict one gambler is talking to another gambler not one alcoholic talking to a person with a weight problem the the miracle would not generate enough force to happen it's one of those things that sounds good sounds like we ought to be able to solve all these things and it would it just is it's i look at that and i just go wow because all of aa that's these conferences the committees this literature everything only serves one purpose to continue to supply the one alcoholic talking to another this is that's where it all happens this is where we celebrate the fact that it happens but it is the one alcoholic it's the sitting there and there's this thing and you suddenly trust and you suddenly realize your home and so i just wanted to get a some thoughts in on those two traditions they just are amazing how we came up with these things and um back with the um washingtonians when they got involved in some outside issues that they were gone in four years disappeared off the planet and they had a bigger percentage of the population sober than aa does today a lot of people um but off went so anyway that's enough out of that now let me tell you what um some of the things that um happened in my life very i don't want to tell my whole story i um um grew up in the 30s in new england wonderful parents nice sister four of us i didn't feel like i belonged my sister has coming up on 30 years in aa and um i went to the catholic church my sister sat next to me she thought it was the cutest friendliest warmest place in the world she still goes there just thinks that she thought the nuns were cute she thought the latin was cute she thought the incense was cute and the costumes and the poop and all of that, I thought it was the equivalent of the Holocaust, that I read the catechism, the same one she read, and it scared me to death, it was, I can't believe this is going to happen to me, and I would just, I would hyperventilate sitting in the church, just sitting there next to my sister who's going, isn't this fun, and so, and when I was eight or nine, I was staring at the crucifix, and it spoke to me, my first spiritual insight, little boy, do you see this, oh yeah, yeah, you see that, well that's what God did to his only son that he loved, guess what he's going to do to you, so what was being assembled here is my story, my old ideas that avail us nothing. Those, these are the old ideas that avail us nothing, this is the story, and I heard a speaker talk one night, and he said, he was being funny, and he said, my story is divided into two parts, what happened during the years that I drank, and what I thought happened during the years that I drank, and as you think about it, I could make the same statement about your childhood, your childhood is divided into two parts, what happened when you were a child, and what you thought happened. When you were a child, in other words, it's a story, my story is a story that I put together in my little head about what happened, there was this mean uncle who came over, well, come to find out, he's a very nice man, he wasn't a mean uncle, but he was in my story, he was a real mean uncle that came over. The reason I'm talking about this story is because it's a story, it's a story, it's a story, and the reason I'm saying all this is that if you were to listen to the talks I gave when I had 10 years sobriety compared to now, you'd find out that now, I had a much better childhood than I used to. Well, how is that possible? How could you have a better childhood now? I'm looking at it from a different perspective. Bob was talking exactly about it. I'm looking at it from a different perspective. I'm looking at it from a different perspective. I'm looking at it from a different perspective. And from that new perspective, we see parents that were trying as hard as they could, they had tons of problems, and we just didn't really see their side of anything. And so this is the freedom that is obtained in Alcoholics Anonymous, is freedom from those old ideas. The willingness to let go of things. I've been working eight months on a men's retreat down in Tampa, and it's next weekend. And I've been doing a lot of thinking, you know, preparing some lectures. And I've suddenly realized something that a lot of you may already know, but it just came to me in just like, boom, holy cow, I never thought of that. That the 12 Steps says, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, that means the entire point of Alcoholics Anonymous is to have a spiritual awakening. That's it. That's why you come here. That's what the steps are for, which is to change your consciousness. And we carry this message to other alcoholics. What's the message? How to have a spiritual awakening. That's the message. Well, boy, it's a program of action. What is the action? I'm going to tell you in two words what the entire action of the AA program is. Letting go. Every step that we take is designed to make us let go further. We admit we're powerless over alcohol, so we've got to let go of that. Then we have to come to believe. And something's going to take care of us, so I have to let go of me taking care of it. And then I'm going to start inventorying all the things I want to let go of. And then I'm going to share with my sponsor. This is all the stuff. These are all the defects and everything that I need to let go of. Good. Well, now we've got it listed there. And then I'm going to go and I'm going to ask my higher power to ungrip my hand so that I can let go of these things. And then I'm going to let go of the past. And then I'm going to let go of the past. And then I'm going to go through every day letting go of anything that disturbs me so that I can maintain this awakening with this higher power. So it's a strange situation when you come here and you think you need to learn and get knowledge and move, grow spiritually. Grow spiritually is to shrink. You follow what I'm saying? You become smaller. And as a matter of fact, you look at all the information you have and you go, whoops, wrong. It's gone. You don't learn anything. You unlearn. We had a guy, I remember when my first month, I didn't know what he was talking about. A little guy who's a lawyer for the House of Representatives, Charlie Bruton from Alabama. He'd been passed away a long time ago. I hadn't thought about him in years. And he used to get up there and he'd say, well, you know, it isn't the thing. You don't know. They get you in trouble. It's knowing things for sure that just ain't so. That's what we did. We knew a lot of things for sure that weren't true. And we lived under the specter of this misinformation that drove ourselves crazy. Drove ourselves crazy that I'm a terrible person living in a terrible world with people you can't trust. There's no such thing as a loving God. And they just said, well. going to have to get rid of everything that isn't true and pretty soon there was nothing left you know what i'm talking about you know that it just no no that's wrong chuck talked about it all the time uncover discover discard oh wrong again look at the 10th step oh what else am i wrong about what whoever would have thought that we would delight in being wrong that was the hardest thing for any of us to do was to admit i was wrong about anything i'm first time i did it my sponsor finally said well do you see where you're wrong about that and i said you know something bill you're right and he said no you're wrong the same thing he said we'll say it it didn't want to come out of my mouth it did not want to come out of my mouth that i was wrong i think wrong like that would be the end of the world um um and so it's it is very paradoxical a lot of things that happen in here that it is i was in the marine corps and they told me this key to the whole thing is surrendering just put up a white flag complete unconditional surrender and it seemed like such a foreign thing for somebody to want to do to solve a problem was to let go of it and i you know i was thinking if my higher power came into my room and i was going to let go of it and i was going to let go of it and and and said i'm here to help you what what's going on and i would say well i'm really frightened about this situation here and say well that's not yours give me that and whatever i brought up he just said no no no you're not supposed to who do you think you are god give me that that's not yours and that's and i wouldn't have anything left there wouldn't be anything left he would have taken everything away from me and i said what am i supposed to do now he says go out and play absolutely insist on enjoying life your job is to be happy joyous and free i'll take care of all the problems sounds too simple doesn't it alcoholics don't like simple things remember what they said in the very beginning okay just don't drink i know but i got like at all these things i got to go no no no no no no no just don't drink you don't understand i got about eight million problems it's much more i mean the solution to my problem is going to be about 40 pages not don't drink don't drink that's too it couldn't be don't drink and then everybody would go just don't drink even if your butt's falling off don't drink okay so hey we have the same feeling when somebody says just let go couldn't be that easy just let go let go you mean let go it's the answer to all the problems yeah it's one solution for all problems oh come on the world's a lot more complex than one solution for all problems i mean that couldn't possibly be true okay what were you doing before you got here what'd you do when you had a problem well i went out in the kitchen i got a glass i poured some whiskey in it and poured it down one solution for all problems i don't ever remember saying well here's a problem i won't be drinking over i'll be drinking over i'll be drinking over i'll be drinking over i'll be drinking over i'll be drinking over i'll be solving this one sober how are you going to solve anything sober so we already know one solution for all problems what was the solution we took something that changed us inside so that everything looked all right you know what i mean the world didn't change i just was in the bars on my third drink and i suddenly said that's more like it yeah yeah that's it well i thought everything was all screwed up well it was but it's not now at least five right now how could it be fine i don't know but it is everything looks different now first stem i saw that with my sponsor i came and you know but every three days you could run again billed this time the sky really is falling i was just out there and it's coming down hard and hit sit-down alright what is it whether my wife is going to go into six kids and then i doing to her there back together so i can'tyimilarly I've got six kids, and then I'm going to hear the Marine Corps. Okay, all right, all right, all right. And then he'd start in. Well, you know, that's true. Yeah, that's true. But don't forget, you've got all these new friends. And you've got this program, and it's taking you on a wonderful direction. And your heart is just being filled with all these. When he got all through, I'd say, well, if you look at it that way, not so bad. If you look at it that way. Okay, so strangely, when Chuck came out with the new pair of glasses, he really captured the whole deal in sobriety. And sometimes I think we ought to have a ceremony at two years. And if they've successfully worked the steps, we call them up to the podium. We take off the life sucks glasses. And we say, we got these for you. And we want you to put these on and tell us what you see. So we put on a pair of spiritual glasses. We look around, and we go, God, this is wonderful. This is the most beautiful world I've ever seen. It really is. It's an awakening. I'm just so happy. Now, here's the problem. We say to the person, we strongly suggest that you throw away those life suck glasses. Oh. Yeah, I will. So I'm just going to keep them in my pocket for a while. It's sort of a memento of the old bad days. And about a week later, we get the phone call. Oh, God, you're not going to believe the fire. Everything's terrible at work. And I said, well, have you still got those new glasses? No. I put on the old ones. And I'm very familiar with having problems. I'm not. I'm not used to not having problems. We're problem people. Bill writes that we create our own problems. Our problems, we think, are of our own making. And it is in the problems that we separate ourselves from our higher power. That is why we feel so lonely. Why we sit and wonder why it's so lonely deep inside of us. And there was one thing that used to fix that. That's the cosmic loneliness that mankind feels. And we wondered, how do you fix this? And alcohol came along. And we found a way of really fixing that core problem that human beings have. And, of course, it was. It was the right path. It was the wrong higher power. It had the idea that this could not be fixed in any traditional way. But it had to be fixed as an inside job, which is what alcohol was. And it was very hard for me to believe that these 12 steps could do what you all said they would. I knew you believed it. And I knew that you had. But it did not look like it could possibly be the answer to the problems I had inside of me. And when my sponsor said, read them, read them, read them, just take a look. And this is where it all is. I read and read. And I went back to him. And I said, all right, I know I'm slow. But which one is the money step? Because if I don't get some money for my wife and six kids, we're going to be evicted. And. You know, the whole world is coming down. Which one is the money step? And he said, there is no money step. What we can do with your financial insecurity is to give you spiritual comfort, even though you don't have any money. And I felt like I was in a used car dealer when I heard that you can what I said we can give you the spiritual. Perspective so that not having money won't worry you and you'll be just as comfortable as if you did have money. And I remember going, OK, technically, I can see that. But could could we stick to the where you actually get the money part of the solution? And we'll we'll get to the God stuff later. And he said, no, this is all the God stuff. This is, you know, so I was getting my first glimpse of you can have financial security without money. I mean, that was like, well, what is that? It is. The power of our own creator. To make us realize that we are being taken care of as we sit here. I love to tell new people in Tampa now. I know you all have a lot of problems, but I will give you a written contract that all your problems are now being worked on. They're all being worked on. So go get some ice cream. Take a look at them tomorrow. See, they're going to be that stuff's being worked out, isn't it? Yeah. You never saw it was going to work out that way, did you? They're all being worked on. So the last thing that we have to do is worry about them. The action that we take is to transform ourselves. My latest thing with people that I sponsor is they want to come over and talk about a problem. And I go, OK, come on over. And then my job is to show them that they really don't have a problem. That they are not seeing it correctly. You have a situation, but you don't have a problem. You have labeled it a problem. And then if that doesn't work, we're starting in on statute of limitations on problems. And they fit in. There's minor, medium, serious, all the way up. You know what I mean? And minor problems. There are three days. You can't have it after three days. Sorry, but don't even bring it up. No, no, that's too long to hold that problem. You have to let it go. All the way up to six months for some major thing. It's all to dramatize the point that the solutions we seek in here are not normal. They're not what we are accustomed to in our own problem solving. One time I was feeling bad, and I decided to trick myself into feeling good. Now, I don't know if anybody's ever done that. I said, God, you're feeling really depressed and really upset about this issue. Go get the movie section out of the paper. And as soon as I said movie section, I went, yeah, movies. I love movies. I always go there. So I got the movie section out, and I said, God, that's a good one. Well, I'm going to take you tonight. Oh, thank you. That's me taking me. Do I get popcorn? Yeah, I get popcorn. And after a while, I had tricked myself into feeling better. Now, here's the part that we leave out. If we really understand it, we tricked ourselves into feeling bad in the first place. It was us. We just took some situation and made it into a problem. And we went in. And the reason that we do this is to maintain this separate identity from our higher power. To maintain the fact that we exist in addition to being a child of God, as Chuck called us. And it's that second identity that we make up that is driving us crazy. It is that story that's going on in our head that's been going on there. Since we were a little kid, about all the trouble, and this is bad. Oh, I'm so upset. I just found out about this, and I just got upset, and I found out about that. None of it has to be there. And it took me years to realize I could ask for freedom from all of that. And it came in the form of awakening. When we talk about our 12th step and the spiritual awakening, it is the power to see. To see things in a much different way. And the rest of the program is to awaken further. Bill calls it more spiritual growth. It is to work on being able to see it even differently than we do now. And so I know I'm kind of getting off on a lot of things that have been running around in my head, so let me get back to those of you that are new. But Clancy calls the disease a disease of perception. And when we come in, what we see is a very troubling world. So you're not lying when you look and go, God, everything's so overpowering. And we agree with you that that's what you see. And alcohol made you see it differently. It was more of a happy world. In here, you're just... You're just going to have to take our word that your perspective is going to change very soon so that you will look at the same world and be quite comfortable in it. That you will look around and it will make sense. It's like you're in the shower and you can't shave because the mirror is covered with the steam. But if you wait long enough, you'll be able to see very clearly. Really, everything. And so right now, the only thing that is troubling you is the inability to see what the other people in this room can see. And you just have to hold our hand and we will take you along until it clears up. And the clearing up is very exciting. You will see for yourself, you won't be taking somebody else's word, how wonderful, how wonderful it is for you. And after that happens, you will be unable to stop yourself from sharing that with the next person. You will be over there in a heartbeat. Yeah, yeah, I used to be able to not see worth a damn either. Give me your hand. I'm going to lead you along until you see it. This is kind of like, this is like a hologram. My kids had me up, I was up in Baltimore about 15 years ago. I'd never heard of them. And my son had one on the wall and my grandchildren could see it. They went out there and they said, yeah, if you look over the left-hand corner, then whoop, it's 3D and you'll see it. And I'm out there and I would be eating dinner and I'd say, I'll be right back. And I'd go back out in the hall and I'd stand out there staring at this thing. Okay, relax. Let's just have your eyes, just that. You know, it's going to pop in any second. I never saw it. We all went home and I never saw it. Part of me wants to go back there if he still has it. Because everybody else saw it. So, you know, I was thinking about this and an awakening in AA. You know what I mean? It happens sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. It'll always happen. It'll always happen if you go back and stare at that damn thing long enough. So how could you shortcut all that? How could you write a book about how to see a hologram? Well, you could write all you want. Wouldn't help, would it? You'd still have to stand there until you saw it. So this is what we say in here. Keep coming back until the miracle happens. Don't give up on seeking. Don't think just because another six months has gone by and that you can't see it yet that you're not going to see it tomorrow or maybe in the next minute it could happen. When it does, this is your ticket into this new level of existence. This now becomes the proof that you've been looking for that the spiritual life is not a theory. You're not. You're your own personal I see it. I see it. That is worth being alive for to have that. There isn't a bigger experience. I can't think of a bigger experience that human beings could have than to see the truth about themselves in that fashion. And once that happens, you're a seeker for more of it. I want more to be revealed. Bill talks about that. I want more to be revealed. I want more. I want to see the whole picture. And this is the organization we're in. We're in this society that we belong to enables us to continue this journey and to share it with those that are coming behind us. I'm out of time and I just want to tell you how happy I am to have spent my anniversary here with all of you and God bless. Thanks.